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book reviews
books on wokenessreviewed by T. Nelson |
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book reviews
books on wokenessreviewed by T. Nelson |
Reviewed by T. Nelson
I bought this book by mistake, having gotten Julie Burchill mixed up with Julie Bindel. This writer is a cross between Camille Paglia and Ann Coulter. She writes in a type of English that is ultra-British, witty, clever, insightful, and profane all at once. She is also courageous: political correctness is nowhere in her genome. Her brutal and hilarious description of trans-woman ‘fauxginas’ and “Troons” (trans goons) [p.98–99] has to be read to be believed. “Turning their genitalia into Abbatoir Pick'n'Mix” is a tame one. Another one is “attempting to stop some woman from speaking truth to penis” [p.104].
In these stupfeyingly censorious times, those who yearn to burn books but are afraid of fire can always destroy them another way: by *re-framing* them so badly that no one will ever want to read them. There will be a huge void where truthful, exciting entertainment used to be. But I'm sure that Generation Bedwetter can easily replace it with ukulele solos and social distanced dancing flash mobs. [p.5]
There's a whole industry out there now for developing theories about wokeness. Her theory:
Wokeness is, at heart, merely the latest attempt by the privileged to corral and control the scary proletarian hordes. [p.21]
To be woke is to be outraged by everything. When Marks & Spencer started selling “LGBT” —lettuce, guacamole, bacon, and tomato—sandwiches to celebrate gayness, the wokesters found a way to become outraged:
. . . many found it hard to swallow: ‘I felt so enraged I left the shop. Basically equating us to a sandwich?’
Some of what she writes is incomprehensible:
Eventually they [the police, called the PC] retired exhausted and I bounced off to lick my mirrors in celebration. The nutter eventually turned up at the Guardian offices—believing I'd work in an office with that bunch was truly proof of his tenuous grasp on reality.
She got into trouble with the wokesters way back in 2013 after defending Suzanne Moore in the Observer, a British newspaper, after Moore got “monstered” on Twitter by trans activists for saying that women are unhappy for not having the body shape of a Brazilian transsexual. She describes her childhood as Baby Jekyll born-again as Jailbait Hyde [p.126] who was into porn:
I used to ring up those primitive sex chat lines . . . and I'd be 'done' before the nice lady had even finished reading out the menu. I never rendered myself unconscious, but I had fun trying. [p.73]
But deep down Burchill is still a feminist, and that means she's not so good with statistics. The statistical problem in feminism is probably the main reason feminists have so much difficulty gaining allies among libertarians and conservative males, even when our beliefs coincide. Burchill claims, for instance, that the average life expectancy of a porn star is 37 years. This statistic, which she repeats several times, was so shocking she says it put her off porn permanently.
Right about here I'd normally make an observation that males, with their superior analytical brains, would never mess up a statistic that badly. But the number comes from a male anti-porn activist named Rev. Daniel R Jennings, who looked up the age of death of 129 “porn stars” over the previous 20 years, 26 of whom died from AIDS. He averaged their age at time of death and concluded that porn stars have a 37.43 year life expectancy. This is incorrect. To calculate life expectancy we would also need to know what qualifies one as a porn star and how many porn stars have not died. For example, if the total number of porn stars is 4418, then the average life expectancy of a porn star would be 78.2.
This book is Burchill's manifesto renouncing the woke Left, but it's also a manifesto about the class system. Last month, we got a demonstration of just how viciously the British upper classes and media treat their working classes. She quotes a writer and former Labour party member named Dan Hodges, who wrote in the Daily Mail:
The liberal Left now view white, British working men and women as their enemy. And they hate their enemy with a loathing that is visceral. When I was going round the country during the Election, I quickly recognised this feeling was reciprocated.
Her message is that wokeness is not really a cultural phenomenon as many people think. It is a class weapon just as much as politics and economic policy. Group falsehoods (like the statistic about porn stars) are the foundation of all politics. I hope Julie Burchill keeps thinking independently. If so, she can only get better at discovering and revealing them.
aug 23, 2024. updated aug 31, 2024